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Potent whiff of Scandal from Tobacco Factory
The School for Scandal The Tobacco Factory, Bristol 5/5

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN’S scintillating 1777 satire on the ocean of malicious gossip that apparently engulfed polite society of the time was unfairly described as two or three personal anecdotes “tacked together.”

But, as this production demonstrates, the theatrical triumph which is The School for Scandal is very much in the “tacking.”

Director Andrew Hilton’s Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory company, in a rare “escape” from the Bard, does not need to labour lines such as “In my day bankers knew their place” or, from a brilliantly modernised epilogue, “In Britain we breed scandal in our air.”

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